its splendor. Then all shadows disappear, the foreshortening
of perspective disappears, and all proofs become white– a
disagreeable fact: for this strange region would have been
marvelous if reproduced with photographic exactness. It is
but a group of hollows, craters, circles, a network of crests;
then, as far as the eye could see, a whole volcanic network
cast upon this encrusted soil. One can then understand that
the bubbles of this central eruption have kept their first form.
Crystallized by cooling, they have stereotyped that aspect
which the moon formerly presented when under the Plutonian forces.
The distance which separated the travelers from the annular
summits of Tycho was not so great but that they could catch
the principal details. Even on the causeway forming the
fortifications of Tycho, the mountains hanging on to the
interior and exterior sloping flanks rose in stories like
gigantic terraces. They appeared to be higher by 300 or 400
feet to the west than to the east. No system of terrestrial
encampment could equal these natural fortifications. A town
built at the bottom of this circular cavity would have been
utterly inaccessible.
Inaccessible and wonderfully extended over this soil covered
with picturesque projections! Indeed, nature had not left the
bottom of this crater flat and empty. It possessed its own
peculiar orography, a mountainous system, making it a world
in itself. The travelers could distinguish clearly cones,
central hills, remarkable positions of the soil, naturally
placed to receive the _chefs-d’oeuvre_ of Selenite architecture.
There was marked out the place for a temple, here the ground of a
forum, on this spot the plan of a palace, in another the plateau
for a citadel; the whole overlooked by a central mountain of
1,500 feet. A vast circle, in which ancient Rome could have
been held in its entirety ten times over.
“Ah!” exclaimed Michel Ardan, enthusiastic at the sight; “what
a grand town might be constructed within that ring of mountains!
A quiet city, a peaceful refuge, beyond all human misery. How calm
and isolated those misanthropes, those haters of humanity might
live there, and all who have a distaste for social life!”
“All! It would be too small for them,” replied Barbicane simply.
CHAPTER XVIII
GRAVE QUESTIONS
But the projectile had passed the _enceinte_ of Tycho, and
Barbicane and his two companions watched with scrupulous
attention the brilliant rays which the celebrated mountain shed
so curiously over the horizon.
What was this radiant glory? What geological phenomenon had
designed these ardent beams? This question occupied Barbicane’s mind.
Under his eyes ran in all directions luminous furrows, raised at
the edges and concave in the center, some twelve miles, others
thirty miles broad. These brilliant trains extended in some
places to within 600 miles of Tycho, and seemed to cover,
particularly toward the east, the northeast and the north, the
half of the southern hemisphere. One of these jets extended as
far as the circle of Neander, situated on the 40th meridian.
Another, by a slight curve, furrowed the “Sea of Nectar,” breaking
against the chain of Pyrenees, after a circuit of 800 miles.
Others, toward the west, covered the “Sea of Clouds” and
the “Sea of Humors” with a luminous network. What was the
origin of these sparkling rays, which shone on the plains as
well as on the reliefs, at whatever height they might be?
All started from a common center, the crater of Tycho.
They sprang from him. Herschel attributed their brilliancy to
currents of lava congealed by the cold; an opinion, however,
which has not been generally adopted. Other astronomers have
seen in these inexplicable rays a kind of moraines, rows of
erratic blocks, which had been thrown up at the period of
Tycho’s formation.
“And why not?” asked Nicholl of Barbicane, who was relating and
rejecting these different opinions.
“Because the regularity of these luminous lines, and the
violence necessary to carry volcanic matter to such distances,
is inexplicable.”
“Eh! by Jove!” replied Michel Ardan, “it seems easy enough to me
to explain the origin of these rays.”
“Indeed?” said Barbicane.
“Indeed,” continued Michel. “It is enough to say that it is a
vast star, similar to that produced by a ball or a stone thrown